


Choice

by afteriwake



Series: the opposite of fate [1]
Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Character Study, Choices, Gen, POV Sonny Sassone, Poor Life Choices, Power Dynamics, Tanglewood Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 04:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17036762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: Every choice has an impact on him, it seems, whether he makes it himself or not.





	Choice

**Author's Note:**

> An old fic I wrote for a series I intended to have based on a quote from Amy Tan on the cover of her book The Opposite of Fate. Answering **100_situations** prompt #035 (" _Sneer_ ") and using some lyrics from Lifehouse's "Sick Cycle Carousel" as an answer to table #1/song#33 at **100songs**.

_I never thought I'd end up here_   
_Never thought I'd be standing where I am_   
** Lifehouse, "Sick Cycle Carousel" **

The way Sonny Sassone looked at the world, everything boiled down to choices. Not good ones or bad ones, simply ones that he made for himself, ones that he made for others and ones he didn't agree with. The rest didn't matter much.

It's the way he'd been since he was old enough to know what power was like. With power, you could look down on anyone you wanted. With power, you could do or be anything you wanted. But to get power, you needed money. Normally to get money you needed to work hard; Sonny saw this in every man and woman in his neighborhood. But he didn't want to work hard.

He made a choice: use what smarts he had, street and logical, and have other people do the work for him. With that choice, he started the Tanglewood Boys. Yeah, it was hard to pick two guys to help start the ball rolling, but he made a choice based on what he knew. Salvador Zabo was the type to keep his mouth shut and do what he was told, and Louie Messer had enough smarts to be a good right-hand guy. Plus, as a bonus, there was always the chance of recruiting Louie's brother Danny.

Good choices, he'd thought at the time. Good choices with which to start an empire, to get that power he wanted without having to dirty his own fingers. He'd started to walk around, drunk on power, thinking no one could touch him. He sneered the way people blinked; it was just nature. Now there was power behind that sneer and he could now rightfully look down on everyone around him who was weaker than him.

Things were fine until that night in Jersey. The night when Sonny made a choice to kill the two-bit punk selling drugs on his turf. It should have been simple. But then Danny got thrown into the equation and Louie made a choice, one that at the time seemed like no big deal. He let his brother go, lied to him, kept that lie going for fifteen years, just like Sonny wanted him to.

Then Salvador made his choice. Shotgun in the mouth, a bullet through the head. And the phone call. The goddamn phone call to Detective Taylor. Fifteen years later, Danny Messer had grown up and was one of Taylor's favorites. Salvador's choice and Louie's choice later to tape their conversation to clear his brother...they brought Sonny down.

And now he was going to spend the rest of his life in a cell because of choices he didn't agree with.


End file.
